PROJECT NIM Review
[With Project Nim entering into limited US theatrical release tomorrow we revisit Kurt Halfyard's previous review.]
Meet Nim Chimpsky, the irrepressibly cute chimpanzee snatched from
his mother at birth from the Oklahoma Institute by Primate Studies by
Columbia professor Herbert Terrace for a radical experiment in language
and cognition: Could a chimp learn sign language and have a
cross-species conversation with human beings? The superlative new
documentary from James Marsh (Man On Wire, Wisconsin Death Trip)
is an animal activist film, an epic custody battle drama, and more than
anything a look at the many post-hippie social experiments going on in
the United States during the 1970s. While animal lovers will get their
fill of cute anthropomorphic snaps of Nim as he grows up with a variety
of human companionship, for my money, the chimpanzee is a mere catalyst
for all the good-intentioned-with-bad-egos, quite misguided behavior of
academia and of human beings in general. You hurt the ones you love.
Nim may be an animal beholden to his human masters, in fact one of the
conclusions of the three year study is that they trained a subtle
world-class beggar (not a high-functioning communicator), but his
tragedy is far more reflective of science at its most primitive. Marsh
uses a blend of current talking heads, environment re-creations and
archival footage and snaps so seamless that one less savvy filmgoer
might be convinced that this documentary was nearly 40 years in
production.
Lets back up a minute. When
Herbert gets his chimpanzee and his funding, he hands Nim over to one of
his graduate students, Stephanie Lafarge, who already had three kids
and a rich ex-hippie husband with his own brood of several children.
Their New York Brownstone is not exactly the Brady Bunch, but Stephanie
immediately gets attached to Nim, going so far as breast feeding (!) the
new member of the family along with her own flesh and blood. Her
remark is "Well, it was the 70s!" and never is this more reflected in
her 'let the children run wild' ethos which leaves Nim with the run of
the house, eventually driving a wedge between Stephanie and her husband
(who Nim does not take to at all.) Nowhere in this domestic adventure
is there sign language present. Herb put the chimp in Stephanie's care
for warmth and empathy, not for the nuts and bolts experiment. Enter
another grad student, Laura-Ann Petitto, who comes into the chaotic
abode as a 'competing mother' with her own philosophy on 'child rearing'
and organization. Hell hath no fury as these two battle for what is
best for Nim. Eventually Laura-Ann 'wins' and Nim is moved to an
idyllic Columbia University Estate, effectively snatched from his
'second mother.' Now Laura-Ann's 'victory' may have been what is best
for the science, or it may have been because she was having an affair
with Herb. Ahh, the 70s.
Like any complex
case of custody battle, there are heroes, villains, lots of
he-said-she-said. All the while, Nim is building an unprecedented
vocabulary of expressions (his favourite is his own sign-creation for
'play.') Nim becomes a bit of a media cause-célèbre,
appearing in the New York Times, interviewed by David Suzuki, etc. etc.
But the needs of the chimp are left in the dust after the three years
of funding (and use of the Estate) being to wain. He is getting bigger
and his animal like nature begins to assert itself. Laura-Ann has left
after her affair with Herb went sour, new sign language teachers come
into the picture. One has her face severely torn in an attack by Nim.
The chimp has well gone through puberty and is humping everything in
sight, not to mention he is much stronger than a man at this point. He
is kept on a leash for his own safety. To cap it all off, there is no
exit strategy for this experiment. What to do with Nim, other than let
him join his own kind (for the first time) back at the research lab,
getting injections for experimental Hepatitis vaccines. More loss of
parents, more abandonment. At this point, Nim has grown up to be rather
indulged, a bit of a diva, and yet is still capturing the hearts of
those humans he meets.
Enter Grateful Dead
lovin' Bob Ingersoll, one of the employees at the Oklahoma Institute for
Primate Research who becomes the latest human companion, as Nim doesn't
take too much to others of his own kind at this point, at least in this
environment. Ingersoll does his best to care for Nim (and many other
chimps in the lab) even getting a lawyer to make a case for Nim being
exempt from medical testing due to his advanced language skills
(bridging the gap between human and primate) but eventually getting Nim
transferred via Cleveland Amory, an animal activist, to a Texas farm.
Although, like everything in Nim's existence, it is a two-edged sword,
as this activist is doing his good deed as much to curry media favour as
anything else, he hasn't a clue about what to do with chimpanzees, all
his animals are of the hoofed, equine variety. Thus Nim ends up in a
small cage with no companionship and Ingersoll banned from the farm by
legal restraining order.
So at this point (if
you are still reading) you are probably saying, "why the hell is this
reviewer giving the whole damn plot of the film away?" And while that
is a valid question, it shows how much documentaries have evolved in the
past decade. There indeed a plot within the film, and it is a highly
effective one that straddles the line between emotion and
conscious consideration. My own reaction to the piece is just what
a colossal failure the 1970s may have been for all its idealized
ambitions of social re-ordering - schools being reformed on self-esteem,
feminism, massively increases in divorce and the like. I am not saying
we should go back to the 'moral 50s' (but the 'sumer of love' ain't
coming back either), but there the human casualties are the generation
that grew up during the experiment. Like the worlds dabbling with
communism in the twentieth century (and nearly unfettered capitalism in
the 21st century), it simply fails to take into account all the human
flaws and underscores time and time again a distinct lack of long term
planning in favour of the short-term ego boost or emotional-high. That
a documentary about a chimpanzee's sojourn through quasi-elite western
human society can reveal so much (both positive and negative) in such an
elegant way, well, it makes Project Nim pretty ground breaking stuff.
Even the introductions (and eventual exeunts) of the key players are
handled with camera tracking shots, introducing themselves via sign
language. The technical side of the film feels fresh and novel as the
subject itself.
Marsh and his producer
started from Elizabeth Hess' book, "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would
Be Human," have gathered so much archival footage and combined it with
talking head segments, voice-overs and scene-recreations (along with
Errol Morris, Marsh is in top-form on this particular sticky ground)
such that we can perhaps stop calling these things documentaries, and
start calling them movies. Man on Wire, ostensibly about tight-rope
walking, was framed like a heist film and like any good acrobat, juggled
issues of homeland security, art-for-the-joy-of-performance, and the
emotional consequences of any clandestine 'movement.' Project Nim goes
even bigger in scope from its own small (but never trivial) story. In
getting great interviews from all the people in Nim's life (he died in
captivity at the relatively young age of 26) subjects, who show
themselves warts and all on screen juxtaposed with their youthful
ambitions, maybe come out of it a bit wiser for the experience. But
what of the messy collateral damage? And this doesn't even broach the
tangential subject of how much better the human race is for testing life
expanding pharmaceuticals at the expense of monkeys and rats. Project
Nim makes PETA look like the kindergarten farce that it is.
Project Nim
Director(s)
- James Marsh
Writer(s)
- Elizabeth Hess (book)
Cast
- Nim Chimpsky
- Stephanie LaFarge
- Herbert Terrace
- Wer LaFarge
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